James West

Senior Producer, Mother Jones/Climate Desk

James West is senior producer for Mother Jones and its reporting project Climate Desk. He wrote Beijing Blur (Penguin 2008), a far-reaching account of modernizing China’s underground youth scene. James has a masters of journalism under his belt from NYU, and has produced a variety of award-winning shows in his native Australia, including the national affairs program Hack. He's been to Kyrgyzstan, and also invited himself to Thanksgiving dinner after wrongly receiving invites for years from the mysterious Tran family.

A 2007 investigation by the Observer alleged that a Roman Originals subcontractor used child labor in India.

Roman Originals is heavily promoting the now-famous dress on its website.

The British retailer of the dress that whipped the internet into a frenzy last week—is it blue and black, or is it gold and white?—has big plans to cash in on its newfound fame. Roman Originals founder Peter Christodoulou told the Washington Post that the dress—which is actually blue and black and available online for about $77—will soon be joined by a gold-and-white version. "We have received so many requests for a white-and-gold version," he said. "It takes about five months to do such a thing, but we're not going to disappoint our fans. I expect the white-and-gold dress to come out later this year." The day after the hoopla broke out, Roman Originals told the Boston Globe that worldwide sales were up 560 percent.

But while almost every possible aspect of the dress insanity has now been dissected, there's one part of the story that has so far been overlooked: Roman Original's labor practices record.

A 2007 investigation into Indian garment sweatshops by the British newspaper the Observer found children making clothing for Roman Originals and another UK retailer on the outskirts of New Delhi. While uncovering "a network of mud-bricked sweatshops" used by Indian garment makers, Observer journalists Dan McDougall and Jamie Doward discovered "dozens of children cramped together producing clothes for the UK." One of those sweatshops, the newspaper reported, was making garments for Roman Originals:

In another sweatshop, The Observer found more children completing a major sub-contracted order for a British firm, the Birmingham-based fashion label Roman Originals, whose upmarket garments are popular purchases in English market towns.

I reached McDougall, now a correspondent for the Sunday Times of London, in Thailand via Skype. He told me that the discovery of the Roman Originals subcontractor using child labor was inadvertent. "They weren't a big firm and they weren't particularly well known at the time," he said. "From memory they weren't on our radar at all. We were investigating a major US firm when we came across Roman Originals."

The original investigation, as it appeared in April 2007 in the Observer. According to the Observer, the photo above shows children making clothes for a different clothing company. The Observer

At the time, Roman Originals issued a statement to the Observer saying that it hadn't previously been aware of the child workers and that it immediately canceled its contract with the supplier:

"We were horrified to see these pictures and immediately launched an investigation into our suppliers," Roman Originals said in a statement, adding it had canceled its contract immediately. "We had visited the suppliers and were presented with an adult-only workforce and practices that satisfied our standards. It appears that our supplier sub-contracted a portion of the business and this is where the problem occurred."

I also contacted Roman Originals with a series of questions for this article about where, and by whom, the now-famous dress was made, and what standards the company has in place to prevent child labor. I haven't received a response.

Adrian Fisk, a photojournalist who lived in India for eight years, accompanied McDougall into the maze of slums as they worked on the investigation. Speaking generally about the conditions he observed in various sweatshops while reporting the story, Fisk recalls a grim scene of poverty and deprivation. The reporting team would go into each sweatshop for just minutes at a time to collect photographic evidence of their operations as quickly as they could, knowing their activities could attract unwanted attention. "Generally, the ages probably were averaging about 13, 14, but we did see [children] as young as what we thought to be about seven," Fisk told me via Skype from London, where he is now based. The children he saw had "grown up too quickly…just not enough fun, not enough happiness," he said. "You can see it in the eyes, this slightly glazed, deadened look."

The garment industry in India is notoriously dangerous and plagued by labor problems, as Dana Liebelson detailed in a 2013 Mother Jones feature. In India—like in other garment-producing countries—it's common for workers to be locked into exploitative conditions until they fulfill contracts.

McDougall, an award-winning human rights journalist who has reported extensively on garment industry practices, says he's now worried that the global demand for the world's most famous dress—and for the forthcoming gold-and-white incarnation—will put massive pressure on the firm's operations outside the United Kingdom to get the garments made quickly.

"There's no question in my mind that the firm will be all hands to the pumps to cash in on the publicity and turn around as many of these dresses as they possibly can. It's a marketing dream," McDougall said. "But what concerns me, from experience looking into many firms, is ordering huge amounts of garments on quick turnaround can place enormous pressure on supply chains. So I hope Roman Originals make a guarantee to everyone interested in ordering the dress that it will be produced in an ethical way."

McDougall has a challenge for the retailer.

"Perhaps they should go one step further and be transparent on the supply chain around it?" he said. "Rather than make it a poster child for color blindness, why don't they make the most famous dress in the world…the poster child for fair trade or sustainable production?"

More evacuations, fireballs, and oil spills.

A train hauling more than 100 tankers from North Dakota's booming oil fields derailed during a snowstorm on Monday in West Virginia. The accident sparked massive explosions that prompted the evacuation of two nearby towns, and an oil spill that threatened the water supply of thousands of local residents. The train was heading to Yorktown, Virginia, and came off its tracks 33 miles southeast of Charleston, West Virginia. A state of emergency was declared.

Oil spilled into the Kanawha River, and one home was destroyed during the inferno that continued for 10 hours after the derailment, according to CNN. One person was injured. Dramatic footage shows fire and smoke billowing through the snowy sky:

Bakken crude is regarded as potentially more flammable than traditional crude, thus posing an increased hazard. And since the derailment of a train hauling Bakken crude killed 47 people in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in July 2013, the type of tankers involved in these accidents has become the subject of intense scrutiny. Both Canada and the United States have called for tougher safety standards, including upgrading the tankers. In mid-January, Canada announced it would take older tankers, known as the "DOT-111", off the network years sooner than the United States will, putting the two countries at odds over increased safety measures on the deeply integrated system.

Here's a diagram of the weaknesses in the older DOT-111 model tanker, which is still in operation across the network:

Chris Philpot

You can read an in-depth Mother Jones report about the DOT-111 tankers here.

The train operator, CSX, has said that the train was not pulling DOT-111 tankers. Instead, the company says it was using a tougher, newer model, the "CPC 1232", according to Reuters.

But even newer cars like these are evidently not invincible: when a 105-car CSX train derailed in Lynchburg, Va., last April, a fiery CPC-1232 tanker careened into the James River and spilled 30,000 gallons of Bakken crude oil. And Washington state regulators are investigating CPC-1232 tankers, after a BNSF train carrying Bakken crude oil across Idaho and Washington in January was found to have leaking cars. The CPC-1232 also doesn't quite live up to the US regulators' proposed rules to upgrade the system, according to Bloomberg, which reports that:

The draft rule also would require that new cars be built with steel shells that are 9/16th of an inch thick, people familiar with the plan said. The walls of the current cars, both DOT-111s and the newer CPC-1232 models, are 7/16th of an inch thick.

The West Virginia accident on Monday is the second major derailment in three days across North America's booming oil-by-rail network. A Canadian National Railway train detailed northern Ontario, Canada, on Saturday night, again resulting in an inferno and an oil spill: 29 railway cars in the 100-car train derailed. Seven caught fire, according to CTV.

By next year, nearly half of global GDP will be covered by cap-and-trade programs.

Solving climate change is essentially an economic problem: How do you force companies and consumers to pay for the damage caused by the fossil fuels they consume?

Let me explain: Without a price on carbon emissions, big polluters don't pay for the greenhouse gases that they release into the atmosphere. The real cost of that pollution is borne by the planet in the form of global warming. So one of the most common strategies for reducing emissions is "cap-and-trade": Polluters purchase or bid on a limited number of permits, which allow them to emit a certain amount of CO2. A regulated market is then created in which permits can be bought and sold. The cost of the permits—in other words, the carbon price—creates an incentive to reduce carbon pollution.

A new report out this week from the Berlin-based International Carbon Action Partnership shows that in the decade since the first major carbon trading program was adopted by the European Union, cap-and-trade systems have enjoyed remarkable popularity around the world—becoming the mechanism of choice for governments who want to act on climate change. The graphic below gives you a sense of just how widespread these markets have become:

What's also remarkable is the economic clout that these jurisdictions carry, something that will continue to increase:

China's national carbon program will start in 2016, but it already has several test programs up and running, together representing the world's second largest carbon market, after the European Union:

Asia is fast becoming a global hub for carbon trading, as you can see from the maps below, which show the total number of programs around the world either in place, under consideration, or currently in development:

Each cap-and-trade program is different—there's no one-size-fits-all approach, say the authors of the report. All of the programs cover CO2, but some take on other greenhouse gases, such as refrigerants. The programs also differ in the number of industries covered. Nearly all cover heavy industry, but only three cover aviation, for example. Here's a snapshot of that diversity:

The report's authors say that the fact that each country can tailor solutions to its own economy is one of the great strengths of cap-and-trade. "Flexibility is certainly one reason why emissions trading has become such an appealing tool for policy-makers," said ICAP's Co-Chairs—Jean-Yves Benoit, head of carbon markets at the Québec Environmental Ministry, and Marc Allessie, head of the Dutch Emissions Authority—in a statement.

But that means "harmonizing"—that is, joining the disparate trading systems into a global market—is now a big challenge. Quebec and California have already linked their systems, as have Tokyo and Saitama in Japan.

In the United States, President Barack Obama proposed a cap-and-trade system in 2009, but the plan died in the Senate. Efforts to develop a federal program have all but been abandoned in favor of regulations dished out by the EPA. There's no sign of that changing any time soon. Still, some US states have adopted their own systems. In addition to California's program, a group of northeastern states participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. And Washington state is actively considering a cap-and-trade program, as well.

Correction, Tuesday, February 17: The original version of our "Europe and the Americas" map above mislabeled Manitoba and Ontario in error. We've fixed it and updated the post.

This solar field at Apple Data Center in North Carolina, will be surpassed by the new California installation.

On Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a massive new investment by the company in solar energy: an $850 million installation that will cover 1,300 acres in Monterey County, California. Apple is partnering with First Solar—the nation's biggest utility-scale installer—on the project, which will produce enough power to supply 60,000 Californian homes, Cook said.

According to a press release from First Solar, Apple will receive 130 megawatts from the project under a 25-year deal, which the release describes as the largest such agreement ever.

Cook called it Apple's "biggest, boldest and most ambitious" energy project to date, designed to offset the electricity needs of Apple's new campus, the futuristic circular building designed by Norman Foster, and all of Apple's California retail stores. "We know at Apple that climate change is real," he said.

Cook made the announcement during a Goldman Sachs technology conference, and First Solar's stocks shot up this afternoon on the news:

Apple has already made huge commitments to solar. The Guardianreported last year that the company planned to use solar power to manufacture its new "sapphire" screens for the iPhone 6 at a factory in Arizona. Last year, Climate Desk joined the Guardian during a press visit to the biggest solar field then in Apple's portfolio. The Maiden, North Carolina, facility has 55,000 solar panels that track the sun across a nearly 100-acre field, offsetting the electricity sucked up by Apple's data center across the road:

Apple's new investment continues the startling growth of solar in America, which my colleague Tim McDonnell has reported on previously: By 2016, solar is projected to be as cheap or cheaper than electricity from the conventional grid in every state except three. Over the past decade, the amount of solar power produced in the United States has grown 139,000 percent.

In another portion of Cook's appearance, the CEO boasted about the ways Apple's new iWatch could help improve health by reminding you when you've become too sedentary:

Apple Watch can save your life? Tim Cook has his watch tap him if he's sitting too long, says "sitting is the new cancer" $AAPL

There are a ton of baby wombat videos on YouTube. Watch energetic wombats Jojo and DJ frolic after a feed in this video shot at the "Wild About Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center", in Victoria, Australia.

And, for a more serious take, watch Stephanie Clark and Wayne White, wildlife rehabilitators, talk about the long road to recovery for "Tunna"—orphaned as a baby after his mom was hit by a car—and the intricacies of releasing him back into the wild. Five months later, he's strong and healthy: